The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the oxygen we breathe.
Every second we lose an area of the size of two football fields.

"I've now flown probably somewhere between 700,000 and 800,000 kilometers in the state and seen what seems like the whole thing deforested in 12 years. Our neighbor one time tore down 12,000 acres of forest in three months. We couldn't see for about four weeks when he burned the residual–the smoke was so thick. It was terrible." ~Pilot John Cain Carter, 6/7/2007

Harvard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson estimates that
every day the rainforest loses 137 plant, animal and insect species.
That is equal to approximately 50,000 species lost per year.

Medicines made from plants found in the rainforest have dramatically increased survival from childhood leukemia.
And now 8 out of 10 children stricken with the devastating disease recover fully.

When our remaining rainforests are gone, the rare plants and animals will be gone forever.
And so will the possible cures for diseases like cancer.